


broken hearts, like broken bones

by Tyleet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bad BDSM Etiquette, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Irene Adler/Others, Poly, Self-Destruction, Unsafe Sex, implied John/Sherlock - Freeform, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:42:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why don’t you tell me everything you know about Sherlock Holmes?” </p><p>“Beautiful. Brainy. Very dead, the last I heard.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	broken hearts, like broken bones

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to dignifiedrice, suzalooz, and ms-kensington for taking a look at this for me and giving me awesome feedback. I tried to stay really aware of the problems with the Irene/Sherlock pairing while writing this fic--namely, the ghost of “the lesbian just needs the right man” trope which certainly haunts the show, and probably haunts this fic too, although I tried to banish it as best as I could. If I’ve messed anything up, though, on this count or on any other, I'd be very grateful if you let me know.

_“Broken hearts, like broken bones, hurt well.” –asofterworld_

*

It’s a beautiful afternoon in Rome, and Irene is getting married to a wonderfully crooked businessman called Godfrey Norton. It’s for the express purpose of fleecing two million euros out of him, although he doesn’t know that. Godfrey is smiling at her, tremulous and pleased, and the priest is saying all the expected things over her shoulder, and a light breeze is playing with the ends of her veil. Irene makes certain that she looks sincerely moved.

“Therefore, if any man can show just cause, why these two should not be joined together in loving matrimony, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace.”

There are several objections that could be brought up at this juncture, of course. One might be that Godfrey Norton is married already, to a blue-eyed little thing in Greece, and never properly got divorced.

Another might be that Irene Adler is legally deceased. A third might be that as far as the priest, the law, and her dear fiancé are concerned, her name is Isabel Moreau, and marriage under aliases is not legally binding.

But the only thing that really gives her pause is the man sitting in the last pew in the church, in the bride’s section, whose gaze has been slowly eating her up since she started walking down the aisle and made eye contact.

He was in disguise, of course. Red hair, poor posture, a wide, uncomplicated smile—but those sharp pale eyes were enough to make her catch her breath. She had thought Sherlock Holmes was dead.

She glances out at the church, and meets his eyes. He shakes his head, and she smiles, turns to her fiancé with tears of happiness springing to her eyes, and a moment later says “I do,” in a clear, carrying voice.

Godfrey Norton kisses his bride, and she sighs into his mouth, feeling danger prickle deliciously along her spine.

It isn’t until hours later, after Irene kisses Godfrey sweetly in the limousine and whispers dark suggestions into his ear, after she arrives at the reception hall looking pure and perfect in her long white gown, after she dances with her husband’s hands clasped possessively around the bared curve of her back, after she laughs with her new Italian mother-in-law, and delicately pushes a morsel of cake between Godfrey’s waiting lips—after all that, Sherlock finds her.

She’s just slipped away, ostensibly looking for the toilets, when a huge, delicate hand grasps her wrist and pulls her into the cloakroom. He shuts the door decisively behind them, leaving the lights off.

And there he is, bending over her, his same cold features, eyes narrowed in concentration, no longer in disguise, but Sherlock Holmes with funny hair.

She reaches out to touch it, tucking one ginger curl behind his ear. “I like it,” she says in an amused voice, and he stares expressionlessly back, so familiar it makes her ache.She thought he was dead, she remembers, amazed. She should have known better, she supposes.

“I need you,” he says, ignoring her fingers, still lightly pressed to his neck.

“I’m working,” she tells him, and he rolls his eyes and catches her hand, thumb pressing down on her wedding ring so that she is reminded of the oath the circle signifies: an unbroken promise, forged in metal around her finger.

“I know,” he says, voice taking on a sardonic edge. “Did you know your husband is an associate of the late, lamented Jim Moriarty?”  
  
She hadn’t. She’d known he was in deep, but she hadn’t known that. She flexes her hand until she’s simply holding his, her fingers resting naturally against his pulse. “And do you want him dead before or after the honeymoon, my dear Mr. Holmes?”

He bares his teeth, just a little. It hardly passes as a smile. “I don’t want him dead at all. I need access to his laptop.”

“So what do you need me for?” she asks. His heart is beating slow and steady and she ought to hate it, but she doesn’t.

“A distraction,” he breathes.

*

It’s Godfrey Norton’s wedding night, and he is determined not to be disturbed. There are bodyguards outside the suite, and the hotel has excellent security. His wife is determined to make him mad with want. Irene has him tied to the bed with soft silk cords bought specially for the occasion. He is splayed helpless and wide under her, murmuring “Isabel” in yearning tones.

She licks up his cock, but does not take him into her mouth. He’s on the edge already, cock twitching against her lips, and he groans, deeply. “Please,” he begs.

“Are you going to be good?” she asks him, and pulls out a blindfold. “Are you going to trust me, my darling?”

He shudders, and then nods.

She ties the blindfold over his head with practiced ease, and leans in to kiss him deeply, thrusting her tongue into his mouth while he trembles.

“All right,” she says, and gets off the bed entirely.

“What?” he gasps, hips flexing up into nothing. “No, no, please, _Isabel_.”

“Trust me,” she says, and opens the closet door. Sherlock looks up at her from where he has been sitting, impatiently, in the dark, one eyebrow raised.

Irene pulls a riding crop out of a shelf over Sherlock’s head, and he stands silently up. He isn’t hard, but his face is flushed.

“Just a little longer,” Irene calls back to Godfrey, and gives Sherlock one chaste kiss on the cheek, riding crop stroking down his side. He exhales sharply, then jerks his head back and glares at her.

 _It’s in the desk_ , she mouths, and returns to the bed, where Godfrey has started telling her he loves her, he loves her, oh god, Isabel, please, he loves her so much.  

“I love you too, my darling,” she says, watching Sherlock move with silent efficiency to the desk and pull out Godfrey’s laptop. She kisses the very tip of her husband’s cock, and then swallows it down.

Sherlock rolls his eyes at the sound Godfrey makes, setting the laptop on the desk and opening it. Irene sits up, and Godfrey immediately protests. 

“Mm, maybe we should gag you,” she says with a smirk, and picks up the riding crop. She then proceeds to make her husband scream, so involved with his own body that he couldn’t possibly notice the sounds of Sherlock quietly transferring files to an external hard drive and funds from various bank accounts to others.

She watches Sherlock the whole time. He is unmoved by the blowjob, except for his ostentatious annoyance, but when she slaps Godfrey’s balls and bites the tip of his cock, he goes very still in his seat. When she strikes Godfrey’s chest with the crop until she can see the tears through the blindfold, the tips of Sherlock’s ears turn a dull red. When she slides the handle of the crop into Godfrey’s arse and fucks him with it until he begs for mercy, Sherlock actually closes his eyes for a second, before opening them and shooting her a fierce glare. She blows him a silent kiss, and he goes back to typing with almost enough vehemence to attract Godfrey’s attention.  
  
In half an hour’s time, Sherlock has successfully ruined Godfrey’s career and offered him to Interpol on a plate, Godfrey still hasn’t come, although he has been gagged, and Irene has confirmed that Sherlock Holmes does, indeed, like sex. At least under specific conditions.

“Time to go,” Sherlock says when he’s finished, not bothering to whisper as he closes the laptop.

Godfrey freezes and shouts into his ball gag.

“Did you transfer the funds like I asked?” Irene asks, keeping up her lazy strokes on Godfrey’s cock.

“Of course,” Sherlock replies, as Godfrey discovers that the knots tied into his bonds weren’t tricks, after all. “Interpol will be here in half an hour. We should both be out of the city by then.

Godfrey is struggling in earnest, now, but when Irene tightens her hand around his cock and strokes upward once, twice, three times, he gives a defeated groan and comes.

“Was that really necessary?” Sherlock asks, in a carefully disgusted tone.

“One thing you don’t appear to understand about me,” she replies, slipping her shoes back on and pulling on her coat, “is that I always keep my promises.” She leaves her wedding ring on the floor.

They escape out the window, and as they walk together through the streets of Rome, carefully pretending to be a couple like any other, Irene twining her arm with his and relaxing against his side.

“Does John know you came to my wedding?” she asks him, and he stiffens. Ah. She’s struck by the thought that this is familiar, that she’d shown him how to do this, how to die and leave your lover heartbroken.

“Was I your inspiration?” she asks with careful lightness, and he is silent for a few minutes, as they walk.

“Yes,” he answers finally. “Not that it’s anything to do with you.”  
  
“I never said it was,” she replies.

They reach a Metro station. “If you need me—“ she says, throwing caution to the wind because it doesn’t matter, he already knows she loves him.

“I won’t,” he tells her flatly, and she wants to kiss him very badly but knows it would not be welcomed.

Instead she reaches for his hand and presses her mouth firmly to his knuckles, her eyes sliding shut. “But if you do,” she says, before opening them.

She leaves before he can leave her.

*

Six months pass before she hears from him. She’s working a job in Los Angeles, and she’s also indulging herself a little with the pretty faces of Hollywood. Scarlett Johansson is the most pleasant distraction she’s come across in ages, and the Getty Museum makes for an exciting challenge.

She’s caught in traffic between the Getty and Silverlake when she gets the text from an unknown number: _Have possibly offended local cartel_ , it reads. _Corner of Lacienega and Western. Assistance appreciated. -SH_

 _Oh, but you’re all out of favors, Mr. Holmes_ , she texts back while gunning her engine threateningly. _Are you asking for my help_?

 _No_ , comes the reply. _If you consider one sexual encounter with a man you were going to have intercourse with regardless fair payment for a life debt, you are mistaken._

 _That’s fair_ , she taps out, and cuts out a sedan while changing lanes. _I wouldn’t want to owe you, after all._

_Bring a gun, if you have one._

_Stay alive until I get there,_ she replies, and loads the gun she always keeps in her purse with one hand.

*

Seven hours later, and Sherlock is sitting shirtless on her bathroom floor, his arm braced on the rim of the bathtub, wincing as she pours soapy water over the red gash on his forearm.

“Next time, don’t get shot,” she says without pity. Bad enough that he saw her face when it happened. She picks up a needle and black thread from her first-aid kit.

“Grazed,” he says, a little breathlessly. “It hardly counts as being shot.”

She threads the needle. “Why, Mr. Holmes. You sound disappointed.”  
  
“Stop ascribing emotions to me that _are not there_ ,” he snaps, and then sucks in a breath as she pierces his skin and makes the first stitch.

“Mm,” she says, smiling very slightly. “Not imagining everything, though, am I?”

“I am actually trying to stay alive,” he tells her, but there is a bright flush rising in his cheeks, and she can read his body as well as he can read hers.

“Of course you are,” she says soothingly, and keeps her stitches tight and even. “But you would like a war wound, wouldn’t you. Something to match your doctor’s.”

“Oh, have you been reading _The Star_ , is that it?” he asks scornfully, but his breathing is uneven. “That’s a bit trashy, even for you.”

“No,” she says. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” She’s lying. _The Star_ ran a review of John H. Watson’s first book last month, and the old rumors about confirmed bachelorhood and all the implications thereof were dragged back up.

“More insinuations,” Sherlock mutters, and she can tell he’s angry. “Misreadings. Your style.”

“They’re not misreading everything,” she says gently, piercing his skin. She’s glad she has him caught like this, unable to walk away.

“Slandering the dead is generally considered tasteless,” Sherlock snaps, then inhales sharply as she finishes her last stitch and ties it shut. “John and I were never compatible.”

“What on earth does that have to do with anything?” she asks.

He opens his mouth to answer, and she kisses him, running her thumb over the new line of stitches at the same time.

He gasps against her lips, and she licks into his mouth, her other hand sneaking around the back of his head to twist cruelly in his hair. His arm flexes under her fingers, and she can feel his pulse hammering in his wrist.

She pulls back, pressing another quick kiss to his mouth as she goes. There are twin spots of color high on his cheeks, his lips are wet and pink and still slightly parted, and his eyes are very wide. He looks wrecked. She gives one last vicious tug to his hair before letting go, stroking once down the back of his head.

“Love,” she murmurs, “is so much less complicated than people think.” All he and Doctor Watson are, after all, is people who love each other. She’s the one who’s going to hurt him. She’s the one who _wants_ to, even if he doesn’t feel half as much for her. She’s going to make him bleed and he’s going to love it and he and John Watson can keep on feeling what they always have. She has always understood that caring is not an advantage.

He stands up, wrenching his arm away, and she rises with him, following him to the door.

“Sherlock,” she says, using her command voice, so he’ll listen. He stops, back to her. “I saved your life today. I don’t owe you anything.”

He leaves, the line of his shoulders telling her nothing.

*

She cleans up the bloodied mess on her bathroom floor. She turns off her smoke detector and burns her bloodstained dress and the shirt Sherlock left crumpled by the door in the bathroom. She cleans her gun, and washes her face.

Then she picks up her phone, and googles John Watson’s book. She reads the Amazon preview very carefully. The book is dedicated to a woman called Mary, with thanks for helping him through the last year. She scrolls through the book’s reviews with a few disinterested clicks, then types in the address for John’s blog.

There hasn’t been a new post in over a year, although the last one hasn’t been deleted, still proud and stubbornly true.

 _He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him_.

She leaves a comment, anonymously: _Then you’re an idiot, mate._

*

She doesn’t spend all of her time thinking about him, of course. It’s a long road to rebuilding everything she lost two years ago. She calls in old favors, creates opportunities to lend out new ones, drafts a couple brand new aliases and starts putting them to perfectly innocent use. Safe houses become even more of a necessity. There is work for her to do, and it has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes.

But she sees John Watson’s book everywhere. It’s a matte hardback, a photograph of Sherlock, fairly springing from the black cover, pale and intense as always. It’s become a bestseller, which she’s sure Sherlock hates.  
  
And if she pauses once at a display table at a Brookstones in Logan airport, and looks a little longer than she should, no one has to know. 

*

Two months after that, a contact in Budapest gets in touch. A man matching the description Irene sent out ended up in hospital with a knife wound to the gut. He almost died, but as soon as his condition stabilized, he vanished completely, even though there was no way he could have walked out of the hospital on his own steam.

She wonders how many times in the last year and a half Sherlock has almost died before his brother spirited him away to government doctors who wouldn’t ask difficult questions. 

She tries calling the last number he gave her, but of course it doesn’t work.

*

She’s loved people before Sherlock. Men and women. She found the word _lesbian_ when she was thirteen and it fit like a well tailored dress, but she’s always believed that love is less complicated than sex. Love takes care of itself. Love _is_. She had to learn how to make the bodies work. Luckily, she’s now an expert.

She loved Grace, when she was sixteen and Grace was older, powerful, perfect. A terror in designer clothes, with a smile that threatened as much as it promised. Irene wanted to be her every bit as much as she wanted her. Grace gave her everything—practice, experience, kisses that singed the top of her skull and heated the pads of her feet, a set of lockpicks, her first broken heart. The first time Irene ever genuinely thought about murdering someone was after Grace left her.

She loved Peter, although he came as enough of a surprise that she didn’t realize it until after she’d ruined his life. She doesn’t let herself think about Peter very often.

She thinks she loved Kate. At least at first. They stayed together long enough that “comfortable” had begun to feel more appropriate than “loved.” But Kate vanished after Sherlock ruined her, and Irene doesn’t suppose she’ll ever see her again.

She loved Veronica, of course. Loves Veronica. She’ll probably always love Veronica, but that doesn’t matter, because Veronica is dead

Or maybe she isn’t, Irene thinks with a dull ache. Maybe the car accident was a trick, the body carried away on the stretcher a decoy, the terrible love Irene felt outside her hospital room entirely manufactured. Maybe Veronica is out there somewhere smiling her perfect smile under a new alias, maybe risking her life all over again, maybe building a new life. There isn’t any way to be sure. 

*

She sees him again in the heart of tourist Paris, on the other side of the Fontaine Saint-Michel. His hair is an unremarkable mousy brown, and he’s wearing dark sunglasses, but those cheekbones are unmistakable. It’s a very good thing, too.  
  
He stares at her as she approaches, moving quickly through the crowd headed to Notre Dame, and he doesn’t disappear the way she half expects. She’s pleased enough that she doesn’t soundly kiss that stubborn mouth the way she originally planned, but brushes her lips carefully against his cheek.

“I’m being followed by three Americans with guns,” she whispers pleasantly into the shell of his ear. “In fact, I think they’re FBI.”

“How extraordinary,” he murmurs back, letting his hand settle on her waist with the ease of an excellent actor playing a part, “I’m being followed by a French terrorist cell. Which would you rather see destroyed, the cathedral or that hideous bookshop?”

They don’t burn down the bookshop or Notre Dame, but they run together through a subway tunnel, and when the Americans draw their guns, they allow the darkness and the screeching of the trains to work to their advantage and disappear.

She leads them out at the Louvre stop, and whisks him into a crowded tourist trap filled with Americanized fast food with a helpless smile on her lips. They sit in the back, near a door, alert and casual, blood rushing in their veins.

“You’re bleeding,” he says with disapproval, and she registers the dull pain in her temple.  
  
“Well, it’s hardly the first time,” she shrugs. She barely remembers the blow.

His eyes narrow with concentration, and she is struck again by how very light a green they are. He plucks a cheap paper napkin from the table, and very precisely reaches out to dab at the cut on her forehead.

She remains very still, but lets her smile curve up a little further. “I didn’t realize you were a nurse, Mr. Holmes.”  
  
“I have a good deal of experience in cleaning up bodies,” he says flatly, still very carefully cleaning the blood off her skin. “Wash your face before you leave here, though. You look like a hysterical victim.”

He draws the napkin back, and she sees that it’s soaked through in places. Her blood is red on his white fingers. She rests her hand on the table, almost but not quite touching his. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t lower his eyes from hers, even when she lets her own gaze flick to his mouth.

“If I tried to kiss you right now, would you let me?” she asks frankly, smiling to take the edge off.

He wipes her blood off his fingers, face expressionless.

She’s just about to lean back and offer him yet another out when he stands up, eyes still fixed on her, and then he’s bending over her, carefully tilting her head up to his, resting his other hand on her shoulder.

She lets her eyes drop almost all the way shut, and when he speaks she can feel the words just barely brush against her lips. “Only if it were the end of the world,” he tells her, soft and venomous.

*

She goes to Nice for a while after that. She finds a sweet university girl with a sweet rosebud mouth, and she kisses it, kisses it, kisses it.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can love you,” the girl tells her one morning. She’s curled up in the window seat of Irene’s hotel room, her young face distant and concentrated inward. As though no one else has felt this way before her, as though she is the very first one to discover that love and pleasure are distinct.

“How sweet of you to worry,” Irene says, lying naked in the bed. She’s not sure she’ll be able to love anyone who couldn’t utterly destroy her ever again.

The girl climbs back into bed, her eyes wide and tragic, and Irene rolls her eyes and kisses her breathless, kisses her until her cheeks are flushed pink and her breath is harsh and she’s begging for Irene to get her off.

For a very brief moment, Irene feels old.

*

She tells a dealer in Prague that he needn’t be at all afraid to work with her now, because Moriarty is dead, and the ban presumably lifted.

“He’s not dead,” the man tells her at once, with wide, fearful eyes. “He’s not even a man. He’s a ghost.”  
  
“He shot his own head in,” she tells him coldly. He laughs at her, a little manic, and tells her he spoke with Moriarty last week. It was him, he insists, his hand inching toward the gun he keeps at the small of his back. It was definitely him. He had a plan—he had a plan all along.

In the end she has to leave in a hurry. She tells herself the cold shudder that takes over her is self-preservation.

*

Her google alerts tell her that John Watson is engaged to be married. FORMER SIDEKICK, AUTHOR OF DETECTIVE TELL-ALL TO TIE THE KNOT, the headline screams. There’s a photo of John with his arm around a woman whose left hand is circled in red.

She can’t get in touch with Sherlock. She hasn’t heard from him in months. He could be anywhere, she tells herself, probing at the edges of the old wound. He could be dead, for all she knows.

The woman in the photograph is beautiful, in a subdued way. She’s just slightly taller than John in heels, and her hair is short and dark and wild, but that’s where her resemblance to Sherlock ends. John isn’t looking at her, but directly at the camera. He looks exhausted, and faintly ill.  
  
Without letting herself consider it too much, she books herself a plane ticket.

*

She lands in London on a Saturday morning.  
  
It hasn’t changed. It’s the same as it’s always been—gray and bleak and inviting, the shake and screech of the tube through the station entrance like the city’s blood pulsing below her.

She’s different, of course. She has no pretensions as to being able to travel undetected by Sherlock’s brother in Sherlock’s abandoned city, but she would at least like to avoid the probing eyes of MI5 and the Met, so she walks down Baker Street dressed in jeans and sunglasses, her hair falling out of a loose braid, wrapped in a hoodie. She orders a cappuccino and a muffin from the nearest Caffe Nero and settles herself in at the window, pulling out her phone and checking her twitter. She’s sure she looks like nothing so much as a tourist checking her email before making her way to Madam Tussauds.

She waits for two hours before she strikes gold: John Watson walking purposefully towards the park. She gets up at once and follows him from a safe distance, still pretending interest in her phone.

He meets his fiancé at the British Museum. Irene can feel her lip curling just slightly.

The woman is waiting for him at the entrance. She has a coffee and cream complexion, smiles easily, and John’s hand looks perfectly fitted to the small of her back. John looks at her like she’s the only good thing left in the world. 

She lets herself melt into the crowd standing around the Rosetta stone long enough to hear John call her “Mary,” to see the woman wind her fingers around John’s and tug him past.

Irene’s phone rings. She walks casually away from the doctor and the woman he’s so clearly in love with, answering the call in a long hallway decorated with stone tablets older than London itself.

“ _Get out_ ,” Sherlock says into her ear, furious.

“You don’t own the city, my dear,” she murmurs, smiling apologetically at the security guard, making her way to the end of the exhibition. “Did Big Brother patch you through to me? Give him my regards.”

“This is not about _you_ ,” he spits, “and it is not about _him_ , so get out.”

“I don’t owe you any more favors,” she reminds him. “And if it isn’t about either of us, surely it won’t matter if I pay the good doctor a visit.”

She takes a seat in the vast white heart of the museum, certain her voice will be lost in the opera of accents and languages bandied across the tables.

“There is more to this than you know,” he says, and she can imagine him perfectly: red-faced and impotent, hating as always that she can wrench control out of his hands. Maybe tugging at his own hair, letting the pain give him focus.

“Then let me help,” she tells him steadily.

“Help me by _leaving_ ,” he bites out.  

“I’d like a reason,” she murmurs.

“If you continue to put John in danger, I will not hesitate to remove you from the situation permanently.” His voice is very cold.  

She can’t help it. She laughs. “You’ve never killed a man in your life. Tell me more about John being in danger.”

“Stop being jealous,” he snarls. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Your doctor is in the next room,” she tells him, delicately. “I could go up to him right now. Put my hand on his shoulder. Do any number of things. Where on earth are you?”

“What do you _want_?” he asks, and there it is. That thin, frustrated tone that means he’s ready to give in.

“I want you to tell me exactly what it is you’re risking,” she says. “I want you to tell me what you intend to do, and how you intend to live through it.” She draws in a deep breath. “Tell me where you _are_.”

He makes a wordless sound of rage, and she smiles.

*

He’s in Camden.  He’s in _Camden_.

She stalks up the stairs to a dismal little flat and knocks at the door. After a long moment it opens, and a familiar hand reaches out to grab her forearm and yank her inside.

In a second the door has been slammed shut and he has her shoved up against it, his fingers digging into her arm. He is plainly furious. His face is red, his nostrils slightly flared, and his voice, when he speaks, is thick with anger.

“If you _ever_ threaten John again,” he begins, and she’ll never know the end of that particular threat because she drags his head down to hers and kisses him. He makes an angry sound into her mouth and kisses her back.

His hands are tight and helpless on her body, one still squeezing her forearm, the other bruising her shoulder. It’s painfully obvious that he has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s still kissing her, still holding her so firmly it’s clear he doesn’t want to let go. She takes pity on him and drives the heel of her palm into his solar plexus. He reels back, gasping for air, and she takes the opportunity to slam him into the door instead, and he clearly likes this better, groaning and biting his own plush lower lip.

She pulls his shirt out of his trousers, slipping her hand underneath it and pressing hard against the bruise she’s sure is forming on his abdomen as she goes, and his grip on her shoulders tightens.

“Do you want me to fuck you,” she breathes, and he _shudders_.

His head is thrown back and he’s panting, but he doesn’t answer and she can feel herself getting irrationally angry because it’s not a hard question, it’s _not_ , it’s just does he want her to fuck him, does he want her, just what does he _want_. “Do you want me to hurt you?” she asks, and he gasps for air.

She can feel him hard against her, but she doesn’t slide a hand between them yet, just sucks a harsh kiss into the lovely white arch of his neck. “You have to tell me,” she whispers, “or I’ll stop.” He inhales sharply, and she laves the sore skin with her tongue before biting down hard.

“ _Yes_ ,” he hisses, eyes narrowed with something she would swear is hatred even as he bares his throat and rolls his hips into her, “Yes, do it, _yes_.”

She kisses the corner of his mouth and tells herself this won’t hurt. His hand comes up to almost carefully cup the back of her head, and she knows that it will hurt. It will hurt well, she tells herself instead, and closes her eyes.

* 

They end up in a bed, eventually, although they don’t sleep. Sherlock probably should, she thinks. He’s worn completely ragged, livid with bruises, still shuddering faintly with aftershocks. She supposes he won’t sleep with her in the room.

“I want the truth,” she says after a long silence where he refuses to meet her eyes but drinks in his fill of her body, probably deciphering how she’s been spending the last few months by the dirt under her fingernails, the creases in the bra she never bothered to take off. “Is Moriarty alive?”

“No,” he says finally, faintly hoarse. She can see her fingerprints beginning to darken on his throat. His face is unreadable. “The spider is dead. But that leaves the web.”  
  
She’d gathered this much. There must be more, something she doesn’t understand. “Tell me the rest.”

He tells her.

*  
  
As usual, John Watson’s life hangs in the balance. She should have known. Why else would Sherlock willingly part with him?

As usual, she doesn’t care.

She thinks about Sherlock’s beautiful head smashed into the concrete, blood pooling on the sidewalk, his eyes empty and sightless. She thinks about John Watson’s grief, his sick sure knowledge that Sherlock Holmes is rotting in the ground. She has the better end of the deal, she knows.

She brushes one dark curl behind his ear, ignoring his annoyed glare. “What you need to do,” she says firmly, “is give me a mobile number that you intend to keep.

He reaches out and pulls her hand away from his hair, fingers tight around her wrist. “Why?” he asks her, familiar suspicion in his voice.

She could _kill_ him, but she can’t do that, so she kisses him again.

*

She leaves Camden with his mobile number programmed into her phone under a deadlock, and immediately breaks her promise to only use it under extreme circumstances by texting him on the way to the airport. _My cabbie won’t stop telling me about his children who live in America. Know any ways to kill a driver without crashing the car?_

He doesn’t text back, which doesn’t surprise her. She still texts him from the airplane to invite him to dinner in Paris. He doesn’t text back.

A month later she kills a man in Monte Carlo with a lethal injection of cocaine. It’s not her usual style, but she manages to coax a name out of him before the end. She texts Sherlock from a hotel bathroom.

_The name you’ve been looking for is S. Moran. x_

She washes the blood out of her hair—she tried to avoid mess, but after a certain point it was unavoidable—and when she’s clean, there’s a reply.

_Leave city at once. Preferably the country._

_Meet me for dinner in Madrid?_ she sends back. _I know a place_.

The reply comes ten minutes later, hesitant. _I don’t eat when I work_.

No wonder he’s so thin, she thinks sardonically. He’s spent the last two years starving himself into a constant state of mental fitness. Idiot. _You know we don’t have to eat, don’t you.  
_

She doesn’t expect he’ll reply again after that, but he does. _Avoid all mention of S. Moran in future_.  

 _Don’t you get killed either_ , she tells him.

*

She sends him a picture of the view from a lover’s bedroom: lush greenery folded over steaming hot springs. _In Costa Rica_ , she adds. _Get on a plane?_

 _Can’t_ , he responds. _Broken ribs_.

 _How many_?

 _Two_.

 _Come anyway_ , she sends. _I’ll hold you under the water until the heat alone makes you want to die_.

He calls her, bursting with irritation about what he pretends is something else altogether, and she rolls her eyes and tells him to shut up, lie back, breathe in. Put the phone on speaker.

"Are you comfortable?" she asks him, rising up from her seat by the window and crossing over to the bed.

"This is ridiculous," he says in an annoyed voice, but she can hear the sounds of him resettling himself. He's breathing shallowly--that will be the pain. Deep breaths pull against the ribcage, put agonizing pressure on the fractures. "Purely auditory stimulation is proven to be more effective in women than in men, and phone conversations are tedious to begin with, so--"

 "--So I'll be sure to have lots of fun," she interrupts, smiling sharply. "Tell me which ribs are broken."

"T6 and T7 on my left side," he replies automatically.

"Good," she says softly. "Now take your right hand and wrap it around your throat. Don't squeeze--keep it light." She traces a finger down the hollow of her own throat, remembering all his soft, vulnerable skin. "Are you taking any painkillers?"

"Aspirin," he says. Enough to numb the pain, but nowhere near enough to kill it.

"Slide your hand down your throat," she instructs. "Splay it out wide over your breastbone." She pauses, smiling faintly. "Are you doing it?"

For a second she doesn't think he'll answer. "Yes," he says stiffly.

"Do you want to keep doing this?" she asks.

"I’m doing it, aren’t I?" he snaps.

"All right," she allows, feeling a delicious ache settle into her lower belly. "Press your hand down on your breastbone. Hard."

Immediately he sucks in a sharp breath, which makes it worse, and then lets loose a strangled, broken sound, pressure on his broken bones from within and without. It must be nothing less than excruciating.

"You're doing so well," she says, sliding her own hand between her legs, letting her eyes drift shut. He's gasping shallowly, and every breath is making the pain crueler, deeper, better. "Touch yourself," she tells him breathlessly. "Make it good." He makes a protesting noise in the back of his throat, and she laughs a little, rocking her hips lazily into her hand. "Keep stroking. Take your left hand and trace your ribcage with your fingertips, feeling out the hollow spaces between every bone. Do it very, very lightly."

 His breath is coming more harshly in her ear, and she can hear the slick repetitive sounds of his hand on his cock. "Find the fractures," she breathes.

She can tell when he does, sighing in response to his ragged exhale. "Don't come," she whispers. "Trace the damage with your fingers, but don't press down. Tell me how it feels."

"It hurts," he chokes out grudgingly. She smiles.

"Of course it does. Are you close?" she asks, breath hitching.

He doesn't answer, but makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.

"Now take a deep breath in," she says, and he actually whimpers. 

She doesn't let him come until she's close herself. If the lost, broken sound he makes isn't quite enough to tip her over, his agonized panting afterwards has her trembling right on the edge.

"Wait," she manages, "just wait, almost."

"Do, do it," he says, voice still wrecked and somehow fragile, and the shock of it travels like a bolt of electricity down the length of her spine.

 She comes with a shudder, white-hot and good, and he sighs in her ear, low and almost sweet.

“Are you all right?” she asks him a moment later, still shivering a little. She would prefer to check his ribs herself, but she trusts him to know when he needs a hospital, at least.

“I’m fine,” he says, but pauses, as though he’s waiting for something.

“Was there something you wanted?” she asks him. 

“No,” he says, and hangs up.

*

She sits on a leather sofa in someone else’s apartment, completely naked, sipping ungodly expensive chianti. Her mark is in the shower. An entire wall of the apartment is a window, a stranger’s city lit up bright and beautiful below her own mirrored self.

 _R. Belami, art dealer,_ she texts him, pretending she can’t see the frankly sadistic smile on her reflection’s face. _Definitely tied to London, c/o M. Kellar. Would you like his head on a plate, or behind bars?_

He doesn’t reply before R. Belami gets out of the shower, and she has to turn her attention elsewhere.  
  
When she still doesn’t have a reply the next morning, she begins to feel concerned. Sherlock never ignores business communications.

He replies the next night, and offers no explanation for suddenly parting with his phone.

It doesn’t make sense until a week later, when the tabloids inform her that bestselling author, longtime bachelor, and reluctant public figure John Watson finally tied the knot. There’s a picture of Mary, looking healthy, wholesome, and radiant, a diamond winking on her left ring finger, and an article that claims “sources close to the couple” confirm that they were married in a simple service a week prior.

John still looks sick, but his eyes are soft, looking at his wife.  

*

She’s in Oxford when it goes sour--as close to London as she dares go when not on Sherlock’s business. Big brother may have turned a blind eye for Sherlock’s sake, but there’s no guarantee he will do the same for her.

There’s a charity ball that she has managed to find a perfectly aboveboard way to attend, for perfectly aboveboard reasons: her Parisian alias needs some exercise, and happens to be deeply fond of a certain art professor’s groundbreaking work on Degas.

“Victoria,” the professor greets her warmly, putting a delicate hand on Irene’s shoulder. “There’s someone here you absolutely must meet.” Irene is led over to a buffet table, and a tall man turns around, smiling.

“Sebastian, this is the one I was telling you about,” the professor says, and the man takes Irene’s hand. “Victoria works in art acquisition.”

“Seb Moran,” the man introduces himself. Only a lifetime of performance keeps Irene from freezing. His grip is very dry, and very firm. “Art acquisition?”

“Among other things,” Irene murmurs. He is tall, muscular—built like a boxer, or a soldier. He is very handsome, and although he’s looking at Irene with nothing more than polite interest, she’s certain that he knows exactly how to kill her.

“What brings you here, Mr. Moran?” she asks. Her professor has gone—called away by someone else. She and S. Moran could be alone in the room, both staring carefully at each other over glasses of red wine.

“The business of mourning, I’m afraid,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if you heard that one of Oxford’s own passed away nearly—dear god, nearly three years ago now.”  
  
“I’m afraid I hadn’t,” she says, heart suddenly pounding in her chest.

He nods. Takes a sip of his wine. “A dear friend of mine, in fact. Jim Moriarty. He taught at the maths department at Magdalen—he was something of a prodigy.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she manages. 

“There’s a memorial on Tuesday,” he says quietly. The barest hint of a smile curves onto his mouth. “You should come, Miss—Adler, wasn’t it?”  
  
She’d given her name as Victoria Barnet.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she says, and he looks at her with terrifying coldness before smiling, charming again.

“I must be,” he says. He steps forward, into her space, and rests two huge hands on her shoulders, uncomfortably close to her throat. He kisses her cheek, lightly. “It’s been a pleasure.”

She leaves as quickly as she can, phone in hand and six frantic texts sent off into the ether—she needs a car and a ticket to America and she needs them immediately, she needs Sherlock to know what’s going on, she needs—

“Drop the phone and don’t turn around,” Sebastian Moran says pleasantly. She doesn’t need to look behind her to know he has a gun in his hand.

They’re in a darkened hallway, but the party is still burning elegantly on behind them. Someone would hear a gunshot, would come to investigate. She’s not at all sure that will stop him. She drops the phone.

“Good. Don’t move.” She can hear him coming up behind her, can hear him picking it up. 

She’d just been using it, so he doesn’t even need the passcode. She’s not stupid enough to have any of the important numbers entered with their real names attached, and her inboxes are clean, but there is still so much damage that could be done with a few keystrokes.

 “Do you know what I’m doing, Miss Adler?” he asks her softly, from just over her shoulder. “I’m sending myself a copy of all the contact information you keep on your phone. I wonder who I’ll find in here?”

“I don’t know who you’re looking for,” she says steadily, “but I don’t see why you have to go to such lengths. I’d be more than happy to tell you whatever you want to know right now.”

“Oh, so you’ll cooperate, then? Excellent.” His voice turns ugly. “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about Sherlock Holmes?”

“Beautiful. Brainy. Very dead, the last I heard.”

He hits her with the butt of the gun, not hard enough to knock her out, but more than enough for hot pain to burst through her skull and send her to her knees. He comes around in front of her and grips her chin in his hand, fingers bruisingly tight on her throat, forcing her head up, gun steadily trained on her skull. “Wrong answer.”

*

She’s been beaten before, of course, by professionals and amateurs. But not for a very long time, and almost never so carelessly.

She tries screaming, but his first move is to strangle the voice straight out of her. It doesn’t work. She tries reaching for the syringe she always keeps loaded in her clutch—he crushes it under his patent leather shoe and laughs at her.

Eventually she tells him everything.

The damage, when he finally leaves her crumpled in the dark grass behind the library, is this: a black eye, a severe blow to the left side of her head, a hoarse, whispery voice and a set of bruised vocal chords, a sprained wrist, three broken fingers, possible fractured ribs, her phone stolen, and Sherlock’s last seven known locations revealed, as well as his mobile number.

At some point—she’s not very clear on when—someone finds her, the taste of blood thick in her mouth. She remembers somebody screaming. She passes out before the ambulance arrives.

*

She calls Sherlock from the hospital phone.

_The number you have dialed has been disconnected, or is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again._

*

She checks herself out as soon as it becomes clear that her ribs aren’t actually broken, and she has no internal damage. She buys a cheap blackberry at the nearest Carphone Warehouse, and calls Sherlock again. Still no answer. She checks her email, and her google alerts have filled up her inbox.  
  
The subject lines alone make her catch her breath.

SHERLOCK HOLMES RETURNS. BOFFIN DETECTIVE BACK FROM THE DEAD. #SHERLOCKLIVES TRENDING ON TWITTER. HOLMES RESURRECTED. EXCLUSIVE PICTURES AT THE DAILY MAIL.

She clicks the last link, and there they are—proof. You can’t argue with a photograph, not really. Not when it comes to public opinion. She should know.

They’re blurry, but unmistakably Sherlock, looming at the back of what appears to be a crime scene, John Watson at his side. Like he never left, she thinks almost admiringly. 

She empties one of her bank accounts, and buys a ticket going from Oxford to anywhere else.

*

She finds herself in a small, familiar cemetery outside of New York, staring down at Veronica’s grave. She hasn’t been back here for years. Not since she first told herself she would start moving on.

Time to start all over again, she thinks, and hates how very true it is. 

She concentrates on rebuilding her New York alias. Claire Duval is a redhead, a billionaire’s daughter, and an art collector. Claire Duval has friends, an on-again/off-again romance with an artist, a membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is looking into purchasing a summer home in the Hamptons. She clears out the tenants from one of her old holdings, and tries the fit of a high rise in Manhattan. She likes it. Claire Duval takes her lover to the roof of her building just as the sun's coming up, and lets her paint the New York dawn onto her skin, messy and bright.

She doesn’t answer her phone. (But then again, it doesn’t ring.)  
  
*  
  
John starts blogging again.

 _I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s like_ , he begins. _I don’t have the words_.

She reads every word he writes anyway.

*

Somebody posts a series of pictures of John and Sherlock at a crime scene—surreptitious mobile photographs, taken when both are clearly unawares.

They are both pale and sickly, deep shadows under both their eyes, as though neither has been sleeping. Sherlock is frowning, intent on examining something beyond the police tape, but his entire body is angled towards John one hand reaching out as if to usher him over, or simply to touch. John is still wearing his ring. She imagines that both of them look somehow fragile and somehow miserable.

She tells herself she’s amused she’s become such a masochist in her old age.

*

One of Claire Duval’s new friends gets married in an elegant ceremony at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Irene wears red to the wedding and makes sure to dance with the most beautiful bridesmaid. She drinks champagne, and toasts the couple. She embraces the bride, and whispers “I hope you’ll both be very happy,” in her ear. She means it. She whispers a half serious promise in the bridesmaid’s ear, and feels a familiar satisfaction when the girl’s eyes drop to her mouth and color springs to her cheeks.

It’s still warm and beautiful, so Irene takes a flute of champagne and wanders over to the Japanese garden, looking out at the view from the top of the hill. She closes her eyes against the breeze.

When she opens them again, Sherlock is there. He looks flushed and angry, and she realizes he must have been climbing up the hill from the other side.

“Lovely day for a wedding,” she says when she recovers herself.

“A better day for explanations,” he says pointedly. He isn’t in disguise, and she’s struck by how very out of place he looks when he isn’t trying to hide. Alien face, black hair, crisp black clothes and elongated, arrogant posture—she forgot the way he wore London like a coat.

“Congratulations on your resurrection,” she says, taking a sip of her champagne, affecting nonchalance. “I’d say I’m sorry for the part I played in it, but it does seemed to have worked out for you, so perhaps I’ll just say you’re welcome.”

“Don’t be insufferable,” he sneers. His eyes are drinking her in, pale and unreadable and all-consuming, like always. “Painting.”  
  
She blinks. “What?”  
  
“You’ve been painting,” he says accusingly. “It’s obvious from your hands—you’ve left a fine line of blue on your left palm, and there’s a faint yellow spot behind your right ear. I would also cite the red smear on your collarbone—“ his sneer deepens “—but as that’s clearly lipstick, I can only deduce that you have been spending your time since leaving the country painting and being kissed by misguided young women.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she says with false sympathy. “No one has ever been so misguided as you.”

His mouth tightens, and he looks very much as if he’d like to tuck his hands into his coat and storm off. Then he surprises her by sighing, gritting his teeth, and staying his ground. “I don’t blame you for betraying me,” he says with care, and obvious effort. “It was hardly your fault, and I should never have involved you to begin with.”

She can’t help it—she laughs, not a little scornfully. He shoots her a poisonous look. “Who on earth told you to say that? Dr. Watson?”  
  
“His wife,” he says, surprising her again.

“You didn’t involve me,” she says, after a pause. “I forced your hand. Or don’t you remember?”

“Why?” he asks immediately, stepping forward. “Of course I remember, I agree. Now tell me _why_.”

She stares, momentarily speechless. This man took her pulse and deduced immediately that she was in love with him, and after all this time he can’t understand why she wanted to keep him alive?  “You can’t honestly be this stupid,” she says, because their entire relationship has always been this question and this answer, always this answer.

“Then tell me why you left,” he says, an ugly expression briefly crossing his face. “I have been alive for six months, and you vanished.”

“Please,” she replies with genuine anger. “I’m sure it took you all of four minutes to find me.”

“Of course I could have found you sooner,” he snaps. “I wasn’t sure the woman who betrayed me to Moran and then never came back would want to be found.”

“So what changed your mind?” she asks, not letting her eyes waver from his.

“I want you to _tell me_ ,” he explodes, taking another step towards her. He brings up a hand, and for a second she honestly thinks he’s about to strangle her, but then he rests it lightly on her shoulder, drawing it back in a clumsy near caress. “I want—I want to know why you left,” he says again, and she realizes with a shock that he isn’t asking why he should trust her, but trying, awkwardly, to tell her that he would like to try.

She draws in a deep breath, unsettled, but trying for honesty. “I left,” she tells him, “because I was no longer of any use, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I don’t enjoy being hurt.”

“No,” he says slowly. “No, you’re just a fool.”

“I don’t—“ she begins, but forgets the end of that particular sentence because suddenly Sherlock is kissing her, teeth clacking against hers, hand fisting in her carefully arranged hair and ruining the effect, and it feels good and she’s _missed_ it so she breaks away, pulling back, and he looks briefly blatantly miserable before she takes pity and pulls him back in at a better angle. He makes a small sound into her mouth, and she can hear both their hearts beating, and she’s pulling him closer even though she knows this won’t solve everything, even though she knows they still don’t understand each other.

He’s the first to pull away this time, gasping for breath.

She presses an almost chaste kiss to the hollow of his throat, and his eyes shut.

“Come back to London,” he says quietly, a low deep rumble.

“Yes,” she replies, even though she knows she won’t. “Leave John Watson.”  
  
“Yes,” he replies, mouth parting slightly. “Abandon crime.”

“Yes,” she lies, and kisses him again, a brief sweet brush of lips. “Tell me you love me,” she whispers.

“Yes,” he says, his eyes still closed.

 

 -end-

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love, and concrit is always appreciated. If you have a tumblr, I’m over there as wildehack, and always happy to talk about anything. Fair warning: I tend to ramble on a lot about Sherlock Holmes, Revenge, Teen Wolf, and the Avengers, but if you're good with that...:)


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